RR: How much preparation goes into putting on your own festival?
BK: We have input. We give suggestions about artists that we’d like, or different pairings of artists and getting people playing together when they haven’t before. We have input, but leave it to the people who have been in the festival business for a long time to help with making sure that it’s really, really good.
RR: Speaking of ambience in a setting, Yonder Mountain played at the Fillmore in San Francisco a few weeks back. How did that go down for the band?
JA: I had a great time. It was the last two days of a month-long trip for us. It was nice to get all the ya yas out. I thought it went great. It was full, people were rocking, and having fun. San Francisco—the place is pretty close to our heart. There are a lot of memories from there, not just from the city, but from the actual Fillmore itself. I had a blast. I don’t think I ever really have a crappy time at the Fillmore. If you’re having a crappy time at the Fillmore, you need to get some more rest. (laughs) I don’t know. I don’t know, man. Go for a walk. Go down to the Wharf. Get some killer Ramen noodles. Whatever it takes.
RR: I would assume that the band never really has an issue with energy level?
JA: I’ll say this. I didn’t grow up playing music on stage. I grew up in theatre. I grew up doing show choir and 16th century magical singing and stuff like that, but especially the theatre background. I don’t care how tired I am. I don’t care how sick I am. I don’t care—and this is years ago—if I am hungover or been up late or all that stuff, it doesn’t matter. There are people that have paid to come in, and my biggest pet peeve of any artist is when they walk out on stage and say, “Folks, I gotta be honest with you, I’m feelin’ a little sick, but I’m going to do the best I can.” I paid for the ticket. I don’t give a fuck if you’re sick or not. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. I bought a ticket and walked into a venue. Therefore, I am expecting a state of illusion. It’s a show. There’s a stage, there’s lights, there’s an audience—that means there’s some sort of illusion that is going to be going on. You go to see a musical on Broadway, and the guy goes flying over the audience. He’s not really flying. It’s an illusion.
For me, I really don’t care how sick or tired or whatever I am. I’ve got to buck up. I’ve got to get it up. I’ve got to get it up. It doesn’t matter to me. The whole band does a really good job of that—sick as freakin’ dogs and we still go out there and cut heads and play our hearts out. I grew up with that mind frame of “oh, you’re sick; you’ve got this, you’ve got that, you’re tired, you’re depressed, well…_tough_ .” (laughs) We, as a band, do a really good job of that, of saying, “Oh, my God, it’s week three, I’m absolutely exhausted. I’ve had all these depressing, terrible things happen to me over the last few weeks, but, you know what? I’ve got to put on and pull up the big boy pants, and get rolling, and get out there and give it my best.” Like I said, at the end of the last tour, Adam and Ben were so ill and it never showed. I had people coming up to me saying, “Adam didn’t sing a song last night; that was weird.” I said, “Yeah, because he couldn’t speak.” They’d say, “What? He was sick?” I said, “Yeah.” They said, “We never knew.” And I said, “Well, good! Then, we did our jobs. Then the service fee was worth it.” (laughter)
The moments when I’m least pleased with myself on stage is when I catch myself letting that stuff effect me, when all of a sudden I’m sitting there and I’m moping or I’m projecting, maybe, an energy that is unnecessary to me, to the band, or to the audience, especially. It’s just the development of a performer. I try to catch myself pretty quick, and I say, “O.K.—buck up, Dude. Pull up the pants. Let’s go.” That’s one of the things that I’m proud of ourselves as us as a band—fly from Alaska, go through Dallas, land in Louisville, play a show two hours later on about 45 minutes sleep on a bunch of airplanes, and play our hearts out. I think if we didn’t do that, (laughs) it would have ended a long time ago. You can’t exist in an environment where people are half-assin’ it. I don’t feel the band has ever taken the stage and half-assed it, regardless of the situation. It makes me really proud to be able to say that. It really does.
BK: I think somewhere along the line I just convinced myself, or internalized it, the music that Yonder makes has to be played with energy. That’s just the nature of that particular music. Obviously, everything has energy. Anything being performed is being performed with energy; hopefully, you know what I mean. There is that sort of high energy thing that you have to do, that you have to have, in order to play the music of Yonder Mountain.
JA: You know, that’s a brilliant way of putting it. That’s a great way of putting it. That’s so true. It would be a strange exercise to try one time, to say, “All right, hey, let’s go out and we’ll soundcheck two songs that are in the show…” That’s the other thing that we do—we soundcheck and try to play as if it is the show. First of all, it doesn’t help our Front of House engineer to have us go out and be laying back a little bit during soundcheck because then the levels are going to be weird once we take the stage. But that’ll be a strange exercise to do one time—to get up there and play two songs full bore, and then, really put the brakes on it, and play a fast song and see if we can pull it off, see what it sounds like, actually, like physically how the effect is different out front. Being at it this long with this attitude, I don’t know if we can do it. (laughs) But, yeah, it’s one of the things as far as us as a band and us as people that makes me the most proud.
Different situations, and you know…hell, man, this is one of the most screwed-up things you could do for a living. Is it amazing? Absolutely. Holy cow, I have five to six months off every year—they’re not really off because we’re always working—and what an incredible job we get to do, but to know that you go to work every day with people and everybody’s going to be busting their ass and if somebody’s having a down day, they’ll be somebody there to pick them up. That’s important.
BK: Not Dave and Adam. I like to isolate them and make them feel uncomfortable. (laughter)
JA: Dave, mostly, and our lighting engineer, our lighting designer, (laughter) I like to really isolate him. Lots of frowns. Lots of head shakes.
BK: That vacant wide-eyed stare that Vanessa Redgrave had.
JA: Disconcerting sighs.
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